Bhagavad-Gita

The Bhagavad Gita, often referred to as simply the Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture in Sanskrit that is part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata.

Bhagavadgita, (Sanskrit: “Song of God”) an episode recorded in the great Sanskrit poem of the Hindus, the Mahabharata. It occupies chapters 23 to 40 of Book VI of the Mahabharata and is composed in the form of a dialogue between Prince Arjuna and Krishna, an avatar (incarnation) of the god Vishnu. Composed perhaps in the 1st or 2nd century, it is commonly known as the Gita.

The Gita has always been cherished by many Hindus for its spiritual guidance, but it achieved new prominence in the 19th century, when the British in India lauded it as the Hindu equivalent of the New Testament and when American philosophers—particularly the New England Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau—considered it to be the pivotal Hindu text. It was also an important text for Mohandas K. Gandhi, who wrote a commentary on it.